Day 325 — November 21st 2021
The Mark of the Rani Part One
The Mark of the Rani — Part One
I find myself disappointed in today’s episode, but I think it’s a fault of my own making, rather than anything inherently wrong with the episode itself. I’ve been thinking of Mark of the Rani as the story which is going to stand out head and shoulders above the others in this run, and have memories of enjoying it from my last marathon, but while I’ve enjoyed this opening episode well enough I think it’s still only coming out with a 6/10. That’s becoming a running theme for this era — every Colin Baker story so far has had the same score for their opening episodes!
So there is lots to like in this one, the chief thing being the amount of gorgeous location work. Mark of the Rani had a larger location shoot than most stories, and they really make the most of that fact. We open with some lovely shots of the countryside and village and while it’s almost entirely dialogue free there’s something nice about just soaking in the scenery, and it makes a welcome change from the bland science-fiction settings we’ve spent the last several stories in. It reminds me a lot of The Awakening in style, and that’s never a bad thing. It also reminds me just how long it’s been since we did a historical story, and they’ve been sorely missed too.
Even better, we get to see our heroes out and about enjoying the countryside, because they leave the TARDIS an impressive five minutes in, having only spent a single brief scene inside the ship. Even that one scene is more acceptable than most of the ones we’ve had in recent stories, because they use it exclusively to establish that the TARDIS is being dragged off course rather than just bickering about nothing.
The relationship between Doctor Who and Peri is another beneficiary of Pip and Jane arriving on the series — they seem to have clicked a way to make their slightly caustic interactions work. They still bicker and jab at each other throughout this episode, but there’s a slightly more playful sense to this than we’ve had so far, and these moments are tempered by them seeming to genuinely enjoy spending some time in each other’s company. There’s an especially nice bit where Peri laments that all the hedgerows will have been dug up by her time, where Doctor Who just walks along and listens while she talks. It makes me realise how something that simple has been missing from the series for a while now.
Of course, you can’t discuss the arrival of Pip and Jane without talking about their… unique way with dialogue. I always think of the Sixth Doctor Who as being at his best when he’s allowed to be pompous and verbose, and I think if I were to write a story featuring him that’s exactly the way he’d be. I’d write him like he’d just swallowed a thesaurus. The problem is that they write every character like that in this story, which ends up spoiling the effect slightly in the long run. The Master is probably the character who gets the most ridiculous turns of phrase, but I’m going to pretend he’s doing it deliberately to take the piss;
The Rani: ‘The aggression is an unfortunate side effect.’
The Master: ‘Unfortunate? Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet.’
The Rani: ‘Call it what you will, I need the chemical.’
Indeed, I think it’s best to assume that the Master’s entire goal here is simply to piss around a bit and have a laugh. There’s no other explanation for his standing out in a field dressed as a scarecrow. I know he loves a disguise, but this is silly just for him. And yet… it’s one of those daft Doctor Who things I can’t help but love. I wish they’d made a little more of it in the story, as some of the most effective parts of the episode are when the scarecrow springs to life and vaults over a gate.
Aside from the Master we also get the introduction of the Rani in this one, and I think it’s pretty impossible not to love her right from the off. She spends more time in this episode with the Master than she does Doctor Who and I think that’s a genius move, because she spends most of this time simply going over the man’s shortcomings. I’m especially fond of the way she mutters about him more to herself than to anyone else;
The Rani: ‘What’s he up to now? It’ll be something devious and overcomplicated. He’d get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line…’
With the Master becoming increasingly silly as his appearances mount up, it’s nice to think that there’s the potential for another Time Lord villain who could actually pose a threat. It’s even more interesting that the problems the Rani is causing are simply a side effect of her actual plan. She’s not actually trying to do anything evil here she’s just getting on with her work without giving a damn about the consequences. I think that’s what makes the inclusion of the Master a vital ingredient of the story; you need him to take the miners and work them up into a fight against Doctor Who.
On the whole there’s a lot to like in this one, I’m just sad that the finished product hasn’t grabbed me in the way I’d hoped it would. The individual parts of the episode are strong, but I think the show is still struggling with the pacing in a 45-minute instalment, so the whole thing sort of drags along until the cliffhanger, instead of keeping me actively engaged.
